I hated saying it the first time, and I hate even more saying it again. The only reason I said it the first time, and the only reason I’m saying it again, is because I think that, for reasons of mental hygiene if nothing else, we progressives / leftists / liberals, i.e., those of us still possessed of a functioning prefrontal cortex, must remain firmly tethered to reality. Besides, in addition to personal hygiene, for the sake of the Nation we dare not follow the fascist-adjacent right, lemming-like, over the cliff of “alternative facts.”
So I will swallow the bitter pill and say it yet again:
(1) There will be no "blue wave" in November
We will more than likely see the usual scenario repeated whereby ... yes, to be sure ... the party holding the White House loses some sea

Every so often, I read posts from progressive, non-fundamentalist, religiously devout people – usually Christian, but not always – on, e.g., Facebook expressing astonishment and mortification at the manner in which the conservative evangelical / Reformed Christian church (with certain conspicuous exceptions, to be sure) has slavishly rallied around the Presidency of Donald Trump. This surprise is understandable if you only pay attention to the surface rhetoric of the conservative Christian church. But focusing on the superficial, conscious, “prefrontal-cortex” part of conservative Christianity is like looking at the surface of the earth and concluding that, except for the odd volcano here and there, the earth’s core is pretty much like the earth’s surface, that is to say, pretty dull:

As anyone knows who has read more than a half-dozen or so of these “Skeptic’s” columns over the years, especially those emphasizing some aspect of history, one of my all-time favorite quotes is by the German historian and philosopher of history G. W. F. Hegel: “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history,” an assertion no less true for being facially self-contradictory. A simpler, more colloquial, and less high-falutin’, way of saying the same thing is “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched”. Many of the comments, predictions, and prognostications being bandied about by the liberal / progressive community in advance of the 2018 mid-term elections sorely tempts me to conclude that, having lost the last presidential election, progressives have a